Luxury Publications: 39 Titles, and Only Two of Them Are Famous

That shape is the whole story of the category, and it changes what a sensible buy looks like.

The ranking

The cliff is the point

Condé Nast Traveler and Architectural Digest are the two luxury titles with a mass audience. Both are Condé Nast, both sit at a domain rating near 90, and both mark their outbound links nofollow.

The third largest title in the whole category has 416,000 monthly visits. That is a ninefold drop from second place, and nothing in between.

So the category does not offer a gentle slope of options. It offers two mass-market magazines that will not pass a link, and then a specialist press where almost everything will: 32 of the 39 luxury titles pass a do-follow link. That is the inverse of the fashion pattern we found in fashion publications ranked by reach, and it is inverse for a simple reason. The usual rule is that bigger titles do not link. Luxury only has two big titles.

What the specialist half is actually made of

The 37 titles below the cliff are not a long tail of lesser versions of the same thing. They divide into clear buckets, and the bucket matters more than the ranking.

Property and architecture. The Pinnacle List covers trophy homes, hotels and developments, and Architectural Digest covers the architecture itself. For a developer, an agent or an interior designer, these are the titles where the subject matter is itself the qualification.

Watches and collectables. WatchPro and Haute Time are the two, and they are not interchangeable. WatchPro is the UK trade paper: retailers, distributors, stock buyers. Haute Time is read by collectors. One finds you stockists and the other finds you customers.

Travel and hospitality. Condé Nast Traveler at the top, then Luxury Travel Magazine and Upscale Living. Travel readers research months ahead, which means a feature keeps working long after it publishes.

General luxury lifestyle. Resident in the US and Luxury Lifestyle Magazine in the UK. Both select their readership by price point rather than by subject, so a jeweller, a developer and a hotel reach the same person.

Aesthetics and appearance. Haute Beauty, which profiles the practitioners rather than the products: surgeons, dermatologists, clinics. Very few luxury titles will run a profile of a doctor. This one does it as a format.

The geography is unusual too

Luxury is the only category in our catalogue where Monaco appears twice. L'Officiel Monaco and Times Monaco both publish there, for a principality of about 39,000 people.

That is not an accident of our list. The luxury press follows concentrated wealth rather than population, which is also why the Middle East is over-represented at the top of the ranking: Harper's Bazaar Arabia and Esquire Middle East both sit above every US luxury title except the Condé Nast two.

If your buyer is in a wealth centre rather than a big country, the small local title probably beats the large international one.

How to choose

If you want reach and do not need a link: Condé Nast Traveler for travel and hospitality, Architectural Digest for property and design. Nothing else in the category comes close on audience, and both are nofollow, so buy them for the name and the readership.

If you want the link: almost anything else on the list. Haute Beauty at a domain rating of 78 and Luxury Travel Magazine at 73 are the strongest do-follow links in the category.

If you sell to the trade rather than the consumer: WatchPro, and it is not a close call. The distinction is covered properly in trade publication vs consumer publication.

If the product has to be seen: the review titles, Luxury Lifestyle Magazine and Resident, which describe a thing in use rather than reporting that it exists.

One honest caution about this category

Luxury is the sector where the gap between a magazine's appearance and its readership is widest. A title can look expensive, be beautifully art-directed, carry a Monaco or Mayfair address and have four thousand readers a month.

That is not a reason to avoid those titles. Newport Beach Magazine at 4,259 monthly visits is a perfectly sensible buy for a business in Newport Beach. It is a reason to ask for the figure rather than judging by the typeface, and to be clear with yourself about whether you are buying an audience, a link, or something to point at.

Ten of the 39 have no traffic figure in our catalogue at all. Those get an outlet page and no readership page on this site, because a number without a source is worse than no number.

The short version

39 luxury titles. Two have mass audiences, Condé Nast Traveler at 4.1 million and Architectural Digest at 3.8 million, and both are nofollow. The third largest has 416,000.

Below the cliff, 32 of the 39 pass a do-follow link, and the useful question stops being size. It becomes which bucket your buyer reads: property, watches, travel, general luxury or aesthetics.

Pick the bucket first, then take the largest title in it.

Related reading: fashion publications ranked by reach, trade publication vs consumer publication, and which publications give do-follow links.